1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to evaluating an individual's performance in a poker game.
2. Prior Art
Legalized gaming has evolved from a simple, social pastime into a major commercial enterprise. Poker, in particular, due to its many variations, easy to understand rules, group participation nature and variability of stakes, has become the game of choice for popular gambling. At any given time, 24 hours of every day of every week of the year, many thousands of people world-wide will be playing poker at social or, more often, commercial venues, including card rooms, casinos, stand-alone console games, personal electronic games and on-line gambling facilities. There are even several television shows and magazines devoted exclusively to poker.
Poker is big business, and therefore it should be no surprise that poker training is big business as well. There are professional coaches, the best of which charge hundreds of dollars an hour for their services. Then there are poker training Websites and installable poker software programs.
Looking first at poker training Websites (that usually charge a fee to be a member), most of these have training documents for members to read, and videos (that can be watched over the Internet) of professional poker players explaining their techniques while playing in Internet poker games. But a longstanding need has been felt for a software program that can run in an Internet Browser and can give quality analysis and advice in a true-to-life poker game setting. There were some barriers to such software being successfully developed, and we reveal in this invention how to overcome those barriers.
There are several installable poker software programs (those that do not run in an Internet Browser) noted below that give simplified advice and an overabundance of statistics. These are difficult for the average player to apply correctly. In this document we will reveal a much more comprehensive and accurate form of advice based on what we call “dynamic analysis”.
Transitioning now to patented prior art, we find that there is very little patented prior art related to analysis of poker. Most patented prior art has centered around trying to make improvements to the game of poker itself. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,222,856 and 7,264,243 detail improved poker games for casino play. U.S. Pat. No. 6,863,274 attempts to combine poker and blackjack.
The closest published patent application to the current invention is 2007/0167228 (Computer Based Performance Analysis of Games, Peter J. Tormey). Some of the limitations of the Tormey application are:                1. The method and system disclosed associate “rules” with “recommended actions”. While a limited number of poker situations (such as pre-flop poker) can be analyzed by rigid rules as such, poker is a dynamic game and rules are of little value in more complex situations, or when applied over a series of poker hands against the same opponents.        2. The method and system disclosed only allow review of game histories after the fact, as opposed to the more convenient and useful method of feedback during game play.        3. The method and system disclosed model optimal play based on the winner's performance (the winner being the player who wins the most money or wins the poker tournament). Because of the element of luck in poker, quite often an inferior player can be a winner in the short run, leading to poor analysis.        
To best look at prior art in the field, we should look back at poker software again. Poker software has been around for a long time. Most recent developments in software in the private sector are:                1. Software that allows human player versus human player poker games (many such games are available that connect players to each other over the Internet). These programs allow players to compete for real or play money but no training is provided outside of the experience of playing the game itself. This method of training is not very efficient, and costly if playing for real money.        2. Commercially available poker training and tracking software. Some examples of such software and their limitations as compared to the current invention:                    a) Turbo Texas Hold'em (Wilson Software)—allows the user to play poker against computerized opponents, and at each decision point it presents limited advice, such as “You should fold here”, “You should raise here”, etc. Also give statistics such as the percentage of hands you have played to the flop, the amount of chips won/lost, etc. This software, however, cannot be run in an Internet browser and does not use dynamic analysis over a series of decision points.            b) Poker Academy Pro (Biotools Incorporated)—much like Turbo Texas Hold'em, it has computerized opponents and provides limited advice at specific decision points of the game. This program is a definite improvement on Turbo Texas Hold'em in the quantity of statistics provided, and the “weighted” advice that is given to the user, such as “In this situation you should Raise 30% of the time and Call 70% of the time”. However, like Turbo Texas Hold'em, this software cannot be run in an Internet browser and does not use dynamic analysis over a series of decision points.            c) PokerTracker (PokerTracker Software, LLC)—This software stores hand histories (transcripts of previous poker hands) for a player in a database. Users can view statistics on how much they have won or lost in particular situations, how often they were dealt particular hands, etc. Although an excellent piece of software, it differs greatly from the present invention in that it only looks at hand histories and it is up to the user to analyze the statistics presented and make inferences for themselves.                        